The CAF Ethos – Trusted to Serve

By Bill Cummings and Col Kyle Solomon - January 23rd, 2024

Reading Time: 5 min

The CAF Ethos: Trusted to Serve is applicable to all ranks of the CAF and is designed to evolve the profession of arms and give military members the vocabulary and concepts to guide their conduct and behaviour. In the CDS Guidance to COs and their Command Teams (DWAN only) the CDS has mandated continuous professional development of the CAF Ethos, three times per year for Regular Force units and once per year for Reserve Force units. This professional development tool is designed to assist Canadian Army leadership to deliver high quality and accessible professional development activities on this important topic using a variety of resources.

All members of the CAF are required to read Trusted to Serve and the document has been included on the Commander Canadian Army Reading List as foundational reading. Trusted to Serve is also available in audio book format. The video below helps provide an overview of Trusted to Serve and provides the starting point for this professional development activity. The video explains the ethical principles, military values, and professional expectations that form the core of the document and these ideas should generate reflection and lots of interesting topics to discuss!

Transcript/Captions

Today we're going to have a discussion about

the new Canadian Forces Ethos: Trusted to Serve.

The Chief of Defence Staff back in 2018

directed that Duty with Honour be renewed.

Trusted to serve is the result of over

three years of work by the
Professional Concepts and Leadership Team.

The team went across the country

and thirteen different locations to consult with

over fifteen-hundred people in uniform

from Private to full Colonel

to find out exactly what they liked,

what they didn't like,

and what they wanted to see in their new ethos.

And in the reviewing process the team consulted with

over a hundred and fifty experts

including academics and all the way up to

three and four star generals,
and Chief Warrant Officers.

So here it is...

The CAF Ethos: Trusted to Serve.

Part one is about the importance of trust,

part two, the ethos,

and part three, leaders responsibilities to the ethos.

So why have we incorporated a model of trust?

Why is trust so important?

Trust is important because

the profession of arms serves our political masters.

We subordinate the profession of arms to government;

Canadian government, and we serve the Canadian people.

And if we don't have trust with the Canadian people,

and with government because of our trustworthiness,

the military profession loses its ability to self-regulate.

That is, we lose our authority over all of the functions

that we need to ensure military effectiveness

and for this reason, we've incorporated a model of trust.

Trust equals character, plus competence, plus commitment.

And right off the bat, you might say that model is incorrect,

because without commitment,

character and competence mean nothing.

One might argue that it should be character

plus competence times commitment

is the formula for trust,

because one must live

the CAF ethos as a daily habit of being

as a practice, as a professional practice

if we are to maintain trustworthiness

in the eyes of Canadian society,

and our political masters.

Part two is about the ethos.

We've expanded the ethos from nine elements,

to twenty-three elements, which
incorporate the model of trust.

What we've done is taken the
CF and DND

Code of Values and Ethics,

and we've taken that in its entirety

and put it inside the ethos.

Those in uniform have always been beholden

to the DND and CF Code of Values and Ethics,

but it was always separate from Duty with Honour.

Now it is integral.

The last section, on leaders' responsibility to the ethos,

we have pulled from all of our four
leadership doctrine manuals.

It is most important for leaders to best exemplify the ethos

and also socialize the ethos
within their subordinates.

And these responsibilities are clearly delineated

in part three of Trusted to Serve.

So, here is the ethos...

The ethos comprises

ethical principles,

military values,

and professional expectations.

So where does character and competence live?

Character lines up with the ethical principles

and military values.

It's about who we are as professionals.

Competence lines up with professional expectations.

That is, what we do as a military profession,

our military duty in performing the military function.

Probably the most important

piece in that trust model though, is commitment,

and that commitment needs to come from you.

You as leaders,

and as followers,

to live the CAF ethos

as a daily habit of being.

And I can't stress that enough, because without it,

we lose trust with both Canadian society,

and our political masters.

So let's take a closer look

at the ethical principals, military values,
and professional expectations.

Those elements that you see up in red

come directly from the DND and CF Code of Values and Ethics

Those really aren't new to us; we've had them
since the early 2000s.

The elements that are truly new are in purple.

So within military values,

inclusion and accountability are new.

Let's discuss those, let's talk
about them for a moment.

What is inclusion?

Inclusion goes far beyond respect;

it is very active in the sense that

you include people into the team, how they are, as they are.

You value their perspectives and what they bring to the team,

and in doing so you create cohesion,

and we all know that cohesion is extremely important.

Accountability.

You could ask yourself, why is accountability in here?

Surely we understand accountability?

And yet I would argue we don't necessarily.

Accountability is one of those values
that is black and white.

You are either one-hundred percent accountable,

or you are not accountable.

And we know that everyone loves to be accountable
when things go well,

but it requires strength of character and integrity,

to be accountable when things don't go well.

And that's when we need it most.

And so we need people to be one-hundred
percent accountable.

All of the time.

Within the professional expectations,
you can see leadership

and readiness as the two new elements.

You could ask, why is leadership showing up now?

Shouldn't leadership have been in the ethos

back in 2003 when it
was first published?

And I would argue, yes, it should have been.

What is the military about? It's about leadership.

That's how we get the job done.

That's how we perform our military function.

And including leadership as a professional expectation,

we have also adopted a new character-based
leadership model

with a more fulsome range of behaviour

so that we have a more positive
approach to leadership

for the Canadian Armed Forces.

This is required today because we are

incorporating more diverse

groups of people into the Canadian Armed Forces

and we need a more positive leadership style
to include them into the team,

so that we can get the most out of our people

to perform the military function.

The last new element that I'll speak to is readiness.

In the 2009 version of Duty with Honour,

Readiness was just physical fitness.

And while we know that physical fitness is important,

it's insufficient as a concept;
it is not holistic enough.

We don't just need physical fitness,

We need physical,

We need physical, mental,

We need physical, mental, and spiritual
fitness and resilience

to face the missions' demands.

And those are wrapped up with a total health and
wellness piece

within the readiness element of the
professional expectation.

And readiness is aligned with the
military value of excellence

because we pursue excellence in our
high readiness training

so that we can meet the validation requirements

and the readiness requirements prior to
deployment on operations.

So this is the ethos.

It's expanded,

so that we can meet today's requirements,

we can evolve as a profession,

and so that we can maintain trust
with Canadian society

and trust with our political masters, our government.

So that we can maintain our self-regulation,

so that we have control over how we evolve

as a military profession to meet our
military function and mandate.

Thank you for your time,
enjoy your conversations.

Many resources are available to explore the impact of character on organizations. Check out the Question of Character podcast Episode 10: What Does Leader Character have to do with Conduct and Culture.

PME Type: Self-paced or group discussions. Participants must be familiar with Trusted to Serve and must watch the enclosed video.

Intended outcome

Standard: Participants watch the video, discuss the three parts of Trusted to Serve, and discuss where character lives. Use discussion questions 1-9 below to guide the session.

Pre-reading: Review Trusted to Serve, watch the video.

Next level: Participants discuss ethical principles, military values, and professional expectations through the lens of their own experiences. Discuss positive and negative examples from your perspective and connect those experiences to the concepts in Trusted to Serve. Participants then use the Military Dilemmas application to examine, debate, and discuss scenarios. Use discussion questions 10-19 to guide the discussion.

Pre-reading: Review Trusted to Serve, download the Military Dilemmas application from your app store.

Advanced: Participants deep dive into developing character. Read Developing Leadership Character (available from the CAF Virtual Library) and discuss the key concepts of self-awareness, the value of a growth mindset, and temperance. Use questions to 20-21 to guide the discussion.

Character influences how decisions are taken. Leaders have the opportunity for self-reflection when taking decisions, and to consider how their decision-making process and the outcome reflect their application of the CAF Ethos.

Discussion Questions

What is the connection between trust and military effectiveness?
Why is commitment critical to the Profession of Arms?
What is professionalism?
Why do you think that military professionals need to reflect Canadian values in all of their military activities, as well as off-duty?
Why are the three ethical principles hierarchically above military values and professional expectations?
What is socialization?
How do you as a military professional engage with or communicate to Canadian Society writ large?
What is inclusion?
What is character?
Which elements in the CAF Ethos best reflect commitment?
Are Canadian values clearly defined and accessible to all?
Where does one find Canadian Values articulated?
What are the predominant Canadian Values?
Why is socialization so important to professionalism?
Why is professionalism so important to the Functional Imperative?
What are the various components that make up the concept of character?
Why is accountability so important for a military professional’s credibility?
What leadership behaviours do we need to privilege to better connect with and lead more diverse teams?
Why is inclusion important for military effectiveness?
Are Canadian Values sufficient for guiding military professional’s conduct (character and performance competence)?
Is there a set of universal (global) human values that reflect humankind’s best behaviours, that might be used for enhancing military professional’s effectiveness?